MENIFEE: SCHOOL OFFICIALS: NO QUICK FIXES FOR UNIFICATION PLAN
NO QUICK FIXES SEEN FOR UNIFICATION PLAN

Recent study shows agreement would add to racial imbalance in Perris district

The Menifee Union School District’s decadeslong push to bring high school students into its fold still faces a number of hurdles that aren’t easily or quickly cleared, school officials said this week.

The district now serves children in kindergarten through eighth grade, and those students move on to high schools that are governed by the Perris Union High School District. Menifee parents have pushed to “unify” the district, which would mean the Menifee district would serve students through graduation.

Menifee Union and Perris Union High wrote a unification plan years ago, but it was put on hold because it did not meet three of the state’s nine criteria because of racial, financial and test score imbalances that would result from the move.

According to a study recently presented to both districts’ governing boards, the agreement to transfer Paloma Valley and a yet-to-be-built high school to Menifee would increase racial disparities in the Perris district to degrees that the state would not allow.

In particular, transferring Perris Union High students living within the city of Menifee to Menifee Union would push Perris Union’s Latino pupil population from 69 percent to 79 percent.

At the same time, its white student population would fall from 17 percent to 8 percent, and there are no clear answers to remedy those disparities, school officials said.

“Obviously, we can’t prohibit or restrict people from moving where they want to move in society,” said Robert Wolfe, Menifee Union’s assistant superintendent of business services. “It’s not part of the American way. It’s a natural progression when families move in and families move out. … There’s really nothing that we can do to affect that.”

In November, voters living within the Perris Union district passed a $153 million bond measure. Some of that money would be used to build a high school in Menifee near Scott and Leon roads that would be transferred to the Menifee district after it is built in six or seven years if unification is approved.

Perris Union Superintendent Jonathan Greenberg said both districts are continuing to move toward unification, despite a number of roadblocks.

“Local control is about what unification should be about,” Greenberg said. “If it’s what the communities want, then agencies need to work together and collaborate to make it happen.”

School officials were doing just that when they signed a formal agreement in 2007 that laid out precisely how the property and debt would be divided between the two districts.

However, the proposal wasn’t backed by the county and the application has been sitting with the state ever since, Wolfe said.

This week’s report specifically addressed the racial imbalances that would result in the Perris district if Menifee Union unified today. Menifee Union’s Latino and white pupil populations — at about 44 percent and 40 percent, respectively — would remain relatively unchanged with unification, according to current enrollment figures.

Adding another high school within the city of Menifee — which is 33 percent Hispanic compared with Perris’ 72 percent, according to the U.S. Census — probably won’t help balance racial disparities that could contribute to promoting racial or ethnic discrimination and segregation in school districts, Menifee Union Trustee Jerry Bowman said via email.

Wolfe said he believed that 70 percent would be the threshold the state would allow for Perris Union’s Latino pupil population.

Other identified problems with the unification plan include financing and a difference in test scores that results when Menifee children are pulled out of the Perris district.

“Paloma Valley is the second-highest-ranked school in the Perris district,” Wolfe said. “All of those kids coming out (of the Perris district) would affect their API standing and test scores. That’s a consideration.”

Wolfe also noted that although Menifee Union would get a bump in state funding as it moved from an elementary school district to a K-12 district, it still would receive less than Perris Union receives as a high school district.

Also, Wolfe said Menifee Union wouldn’t receive additional money to support incoming programs — such as CIF sports — that would come with bringing a high school into the district.

All of it adds up to an uncertain timeline.

“It’s a matter of timing,” Wolfe said. “It’s a matter of the number of students. It depends on if the state starts paying us back (the money it cut from the district’s funding). We have to look at all of that.